The flexibilization of poverty

Far away from distracting spectacles presented by the regular media, modernization is busy pushing hundred millions of poor households into further misery.

These poor are no longer self-sufficiently living of their tiny pieces of land or small number of cattle. Nor are they anymore oppressed and exploited in personal relationships with large owners of land or cattle but at least kept alive to provide labor for the lord.

Instead, the poor are increasingly dependent on markets. By working for others at low wages the income earners participate in the labor market. By spending their small amounts of earned money on food items, medicines and clothing they participate in the consumer market.

Their income depends on the days or hours that they find employment and the wages they receive for their work. The relation between that income and the prices of goods they buy is their purchasing power (koopkracht, in Dutch). This purchasing power decides on their level of welfare.

But while at different markets the fluctuations in supply, demand and prices are influenced by the power centers of New York and Washington, Beijing and Riyadh, Moscow and Tokyo, London and Frankfurt, the poor have hardly any say in such fluctuations. The outcome is that many of them see their money income grow less than the prices of goods they buy. Their purchasing power decreases.

It is a slow-onset, large-scale disaster. The media might report on it at a daily basis. But it’s too slow for sensation-addicted audiences. And it’s too much about numbers. Statistics don’t attract audiences.

[Revised version of blog, 2015]